Fish Behaviour 4.0: Transforming fish behaviour into a robust Operational Welfare Indicator for existing and emerging salmon farming system

Operational Welfare Indicators (OWIs) are the tools we use to measure farm animal welfare. Behaviour is a common OWI in many terrestrial farming systems but is a challenging OWI to adopt in aquaculture, as many fish behaviours are hard to quantify and measure in large scale aquaculture production systems. This means there are still some large knowledge gaps on the behaviour of Atlantic salmon in full-scale farming conditions, but digitalisation offers the promise of better technologies to find solutions to this challenge. In the Fish Behaviour 4.0 project we have started using the emerging digitalisation of the aquaculture industry to improve our understanding of fish behaviour. During the first year of the project, we have begun refining a suite of behavioural indicators for salmon farming in emerging and more traditional marine production systems. Atlantic salmon behaviour has been so far monitored in full-scale aquaculture production systems using a number of underwater camera's in and around each emerging production system. This data has been provisionally correlated with changes in environmental conditions in and around the cages, in particular any spatio- and temporal variation in these environmental parameters. Environmental data is being collected using precision monitoring sensors and this data will be further audited using vertical and horizontal profiling within the systems. The farm and system technology partners have spent much of the first year working on the operational side of the project. Cermaq have also developed the first phase of their welfare app, that incorporates behavioural scoring with other welfare parameters. This will be tested and further developed in phase two and three of the project. The rearing system supplier has also used the behavioural data collected from Phase I of the project to help shape the design and development of their rearing system. They have also developed a first version of a computer vision model for tag detection as a preparation for the planned fish behavior monitoring via tags.

Operational Welfare Indicators (OWIs) are the tools we use to measure farm animal welfare. Behaviour is a common OWI in many terrestrial farming systems but is a challenging OWI to adopt in aquaculture, as many fish behaviours are hard to quantify and behaviour is difficult to measure in large scale production systems. This means there are still some large knowledge gaps on the behaviour of Atlantic salmon in full-scale farming conditions. In the Fish Behaviour 4.0 project we will utilise the emerging digitalisation of the aquaculture industry to improve our understanding of fish behaviour. Fish behaviour will be monitored using digital underwater camera's, coupled with behavioural tracking software solutions, and/or fish wearables. This will be done in both traditional sea cages and a precision fish farming concept, the BioSort iFarm, that brings individual-based precision farming within the realm of aquaculture. The spatio- and temporal variation in environmental parameters (e.g. light, water quality, water velocity) will be documented in each production system using precision environmental monitoring sensors. The knowledge generated will be used to identify drivers for change in behaviour and assess the usability of behavioural OWIs for decision support. This novel behavioural OWI ‘toolbox’ will be openly available to the aquaculture industry. Cermaq will use it to improve staff competence in relation to fish welfare monitoring, and also develop an App for digitalizing OWI data on-site, allowing for robust presentation and analysis of the data. This allows for operational improvements and new standard operating procedures, and future traceability for customers through block-chain tools. BioSort will utilise behavioural indicators to shape the design and development of the iFarm rearing system and get a better understanding of behaviour as a key element of making iFarm a reality.